Make urban buses fare-free. Only then will urban planning make any sense.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA, Works

About CEQA | CEQA Works: "The California Environmental Quality Act became law in 1970. It is an “environmental bill of rights” for all Californians. CEQA is designed to ensure that people in every California community can understand how land use decisions will impact their communities and health, and can hold public agencies accountable to local and state environmental and land use laws.
The California Environmental Quality Act:

is the only state law that ensures the public has an opportunity to be informed about and participate in major land use decisions.

gives communities a voice in shaping development in a way that supports quality of life by encouraging transit, bike, and pedestrian-friendly development.

provides important public health protections by requiring agencies to explain to the public the air and water pollution that will be caused by major land use projects and to consider feasible measures to reduce these effects.

ensures that developers pay for the environmental impacts of new construction."

1 comment:

CEQA was a great idea, but in recent years the status-quo bias inherent in the law has been routinely exploited by NIMBY types to derail projects that would be environmentally beneficial. Because of CEQA, it is easier to build tract homes on a greenfield site than infill apartments near a transit station, easier to build a freeway than a train line, easier to do nothing at all than to address the environmentally-damaging status quo. CEQA is in dire need of reform.